Welcome Back, Raiders!!

I am very excited to welcome all of you to Ridgecrest Intermediate for the 2017-18 school year. I hope that you enjoyed a relaxing summer break and you are refreshed and ready to inspire! This year will hopefully be an inspirational one for you and me.

It is a particularly special school year for me as I begin my 10^th year as an administrator and 27^th year as an educator. Despite these many years, however, I have only worked in high schools. After teaching Spanish for 17 years at Mira Costa High School, I became an assistant principal there for the next six years. Those six years helped prepare me to become a principal, and I took the lead at El Segundo High School, where I have been for the past three years. Although I loved my time at both of these schools and my work with high school students, I was ready to try something new. As luck would have it, the Ridgecrest Principal position opened and I jumped at the opportunity. I was truly blessed get the opportunity to be your principal.

This will be year one for me as a middle school principal and you can bet I am feeling the same excitement as well as a bit of nervousness that I’m sure you all feel coming back to school. Nevertheless, I cannot wait to jump into the school year and witness first-hand all of the many great things that I have heard about Ridgecrest, the incredible students, faculty, and staff. I look forward to meeting and getting to know all of you as quickly as possible so we can all feel that we are a part of the Ridgecrest community.

While the middle school experience will be new to me, I am no stranger to middle schoolers as I have a son who is about to enter 6^th grade and a daughter who is 19. Just like I did with my daughter, I will encourage my son to get involved in some activity (if not several) in order to make the best out of middle school. Likewise, I will encourage all of you to find an activity or program that interests you. For it is these activities that you discover at Ridgecrest that will make the school year fly by and will likely usher you confidently into high school.

We are committed to providing you the best experience possible here at Ridgecrest. That experience goes beyond the classroom. In order to accomplish this, we need everyone’s support. I have an immense appreciation for the popular adage “It takes a village to raise a child.” In order for you to be the most successful that you can be, the entire Ridgecrest community must work together. I have enjoyed the many relationships I have made with parents, PTA, Boosters and Education Foundations and I know firsthand that without their support, many of the programs that make your school experience even richer, would not exist. These programs are essential for all of you to begin to discover the strengths that you possess that will help you to thrive in middle school and beyond.

It’s an incredible honor to be your principal and look forward to working with the entire Ridgecrest community to make every Raider’s experience, the best it can be.

Jaime Mancilla

Principal